INTRODUCTION
Having pre-determined standards of performance is the most defensible approach to assessment. Without a clear understanding of the subject goals students have a greater chance of becoming confused and wasting time trying to discover what it is we want them to learn.
As you plan your teaching you will make choices on what you think is the best way to learn a particular skill, knowledge or attribute. If you go a small step further and make these goals clear to your students, then the written objectives used in curriculum design will serve a useful purpose in assisting your students' learning. The most direct way students experience what is needed to achieve the subject's learning objectives is through the assessment criteria.
Writing Assessment Criteria
Once the goals of assessment have been determined it is necessary to descibe the criteria that will be used to judge whether the desired level of performance has been achieved. Learning objectives consist of three parts:
the student action;
the content; and,
the standard required to meet the objective.
Assessment criteria relates to the third part of the objective, the standard of performance.
Criteria are developed by analyzing the learning outcomes and identifying the specific characteristics that contribute to the overall assignment. These are the standards by which learning is judged.
Capturing the multiple dimensions of student performance is at the heart of criterion development. A range of diverse performance measures can be formulated for any given performance. The main question is, how many criterion are needed that contain neither irrelevant or miss important areas? The criteria then need to be linked with marks in some form of combined composite score.
Examples of Assessment Criteria
Constructively aligned assessment criteria begin with a noun that complements the verb in the assessment tasks objective. For example, if the objective is for students to "explain how concepts in the subject interrelate" one of the criteria might be "Clarity of explanation". That is, the criterion describes the quality in the assessment task that will be judged during marking. Other commonly used quality words used in criteria include:
Accuracy
Currency
Depth
Impact
Legibility
Originality
Succinctness
Relevance
Assessing Group Work Working in groups has become an accepted part of learning at UTS as a consequence of the widely recognised benefits of collaborative group work for student learning. When groups work well, students learn more and produce higher quality learning outcomes. Reviews of student feedback demonstrate that many students benefit from learning in groups as long as the groups are well managed and there are clear and fair assessment requirements. In a group assignment the students want a system that gives them every opportunity to receive a high grade that also reflects the level of contribution made by individual students. The students' concerns about group assignments can be reduced by addressing three aspects of assessing group assignments:
helping students understand the criteria for the group product and processes,
informing them how you intend to measure individual contributions to the group,
informing them how you allocate the grades between individuals in the group.
This section is intended as a resource for UTS staff to become familiar with the issues behind helping students understand the criteria for group processes. It draws on a number of recent studies on assessment and on interviews with staff and students on the assessment practices in different sections of UTS. It contains information and examples of activities to encourage students to understand the goals of group work. The following section deals with the related topic of recognising individual contribution and allocating group marks in group assignments. Strategies to assist students in understanding criteria are also suggested.
Assisting students to understand the criteria for group assignments Once group work has been selected as an appropriate teaching and learning method, a decision is required on what aspects of the group work activity will be assessed. Lecturers can assess the product of the group work, the process of group work or observing the group dynamics first hand (Nightingale et al, 1998). The product of group work might be a report, project or poster. The process of group work would include how well the students collaborated with each other. Successful group assessment makes it clear to the students at the start of semester how group product and group process components relate to their final grade. Not all group work needs to be assessed (UTS 2001: 10). For example introductory exercises designed to build team cohesion are often introduced early in a subject to demonstrate the expectation of cooperation in groups but not given a formal grade. On the whole lecturers already have good methods for assessing the products of group work. The same principles of fair, reliable and equitable assessment used for assessing individual assignments can be easily applied when assessing the outcomes of the group. When the product of group work is the only element assessed, the unintended effect can be that students tend to work individually and then combine their contributions for the final mark. This discourages collaboration and with less commitment to the group outcomes some of the group members may not contribute equally to the final assignment, perhaps withholding resources from one another or complain about "free-riders" not contributing to the final product (Habeshaw, et al, 1995). Assessing the product alone also has significant consequences for learning as students rely on their recognised strengths and are only effectively assessed on a limited part of the subject's learning objectives. If the group process will be assessed, students need to be clear about the criteria. Criteria usually refer to the evidence of learning (Brown Bull & Pendlebury, 1997). Criteria for group contributions would be decided by the lecturer, the lecturer in consultation with the student or by students. All student work at UTS is marked against the stated criteria which needs to be provided to the students in writing within the first three weeks of the semester (R 3.1.14). However, this could indicate statements such as "criteria for assessing group contributions will be negotiated with students in week 2 of tutorials." If the students have some experience of group work, the group itself can be involved in process of setting the criteria for group participation (Brown, Race & Smith, 1996: 123) Merely stating the assessment criteria can encourage some potential non-participants to contribute to the group work (Race, 2000). Criteria which are too detailed can encourage low level learning outcomes as students adopt a surface approach to learning and simply check off the assessment requirements. Developing general criteria for learning about team work is more important than developing an exhaustive list of requirements (Winter, 1995: 66). An example of this general criteria might include:
Having pre-determined standards of performance is the most defensible approach to assessment. Without a clear understanding of the subject goals students have a greater chance of becoming confused and wasting time trying to discover what it is we want them to learn.
As you plan your teaching you will make choices on what you think is the best way to learn a particular skill, knowledge or attribute. If you go a small step further and make these goals clear to your students, then the written objectives used in curriculum design will serve a useful purpose in assisting your students' learning. The most direct way students experience what is needed to achieve the subject's learning objectives is through the assessment criteria.
Writing Assessment Criteria
Once the goals of assessment have been determined it is necessary to descibe the criteria that will be used to judge whether the desired level of performance has been achieved. Learning objectives consist of three parts:- the student action;
- the content; and,
- the standard required to meet the objective.
Assessment criteria relates to the third part of the objective, the standard of performance.Criteria are developed by analyzing the learning outcomes and identifying the specific characteristics that contribute to the overall assignment. These are the standards by which learning is judged.
Capturing the multiple dimensions of student performance is at the heart of criterion development. A range of diverse performance measures can be formulated for any given performance. The main question is, how many criterion are needed that contain neither irrelevant or miss important areas? The criteria then need to be linked with marks in some form of combined composite score.
Examples of Assessment Criteria
Constructively aligned assessment criteria begin with a noun that complements the verb in the assessment tasks objective. For example, if the objective is for students to "explain how concepts in the subject interrelate" one of the criteria might be "Clarity of explanation". That is, the criterion describes the quality in the assessment task that will be judged during marking. Other commonly used quality words used in criteria include:- Accuracy
- Currency
- Depth
- Impact
- Legibility
- Originality
- Succinctness
- Relevance
Assessing Group WorkWorking in groups has become an accepted part of learning at UTS as a consequence of the widely recognised benefits of collaborative group work for student learning. When groups work well, students learn more and produce higher quality learning outcomes.
Reviews of student feedback demonstrate that many students benefit from learning in groups as long as the groups are well managed and there are clear and fair assessment requirements. In a group assignment the students want a system that gives them every opportunity to receive a high grade that also reflects the level of contribution made by individual students.
The students' concerns about group assignments can be reduced by addressing three aspects of assessing group assignments:
- helping students understand the criteria for the group product and processes,
- informing them how you intend to measure individual contributions to the group,
- informing them how you allocate the grades between individuals in the group.
This section is intended as a resource for UTS staff to become familiar with the issues behind helping students understand the criteria for group processes. It draws on a number of recent studies on assessment and on interviews with staff and students on the assessment practices in different sections of UTS. It contains information and examples of activities to encourage students to understand the goals of group work. The following section deals with the related topic of recognising individual contribution and allocating group marks in group assignments. Strategies to assist students in understanding criteria are also suggested.Assisting students to understand the criteria for group assignments
Once group work has been selected as an appropriate teaching and learning method, a decision is required on what aspects of the group work activity will be assessed. Lecturers can assess the product of the group work, the process of group work or observing the group dynamics first hand (Nightingale et al, 1998). The product of group work might be a report, project or poster. The process of group work would include how well the students collaborated with each other.
Successful group assessment makes it clear to the students at the start of semester how group product and group process components relate to their final grade. Not all group work needs to be assessed (UTS 2001: 10). For example introductory exercises designed to build team cohesion are often introduced early in a subject to demonstrate the expectation of cooperation in groups but not given a formal grade.
On the whole lecturers already have good methods for assessing the products of group work. The same principles of fair, reliable and equitable assessment used for assessing individual assignments can be easily applied when assessing the outcomes of the group.
When the product of group work is the only element assessed, the unintended effect can be that students tend to work individually and then combine their contributions for the final mark. This discourages collaboration and with less commitment to the group outcomes some of the group members may not contribute equally to the final assignment, perhaps withholding resources from one another or complain about "free-riders" not contributing to the final product (Habeshaw, et al, 1995). Assessing the product alone also has significant consequences for learning as students rely on their recognised strengths and are only effectively assessed on a limited part of the subject's learning objectives.
If the group process will be assessed, students need to be clear about the criteria. Criteria usually refer to the evidence of learning (Brown Bull & Pendlebury, 1997). Criteria for group contributions would be decided by the lecturer, the lecturer in consultation with the student or by students. All student work at UTS is marked against the stated criteria which needs to be provided to the students in writing within the first three weeks of the semester (R 3.1.14). However, this could indicate statements such as "criteria for assessing group contributions will be negotiated with students in week 2 of tutorials." If the students have some experience of group work, the group itself can be involved in process of setting the criteria for group participation (Brown, Race & Smith, 1996: 123)
Merely stating the assessment criteria can encourage some potential non-participants to contribute to the group work (Race, 2000). Criteria which are too detailed can encourage low level learning outcomes as students adopt a surface approach to learning and simply check off the assessment requirements. Developing general criteria for learning about team work is more important than developing an exhaustive list of requirements (Winter, 1995: 66). An example of this general criteria might include: